I am writing in response to an Oct. 14 Barnstable Patriot letter to the editor titled, "Farnham explains vote to accept John Klimm’s contract buyout,” authored by Precinct 11 Town Councilor Henry Farnham. Within the content of said letter, Councilor Farnham claims that "I have demonstrated over the long term that I do not spend your money carelessly..." If one were to analyze this statement, one may logically deduce that Mr. Farnham only had a momentary lapse of judgment relative to the instance whereby he voted to oust John Klimm from the position of Town Manager. One must wonder if that was the only fleeting period of less than lucid thinking on his part…

Farnham goes on to say that "...I do my due diligence on every matter that comes before us." As exhibited by the overall content of his letter, no, Mr. Farnham has not performed his "due diligence," at least not in the best interests of the voters from his precinct and of the residents of this Town in general. He has perhaps performed “due diligence” as far as satisfying his own bombastic ego and drastically exaggerated self-image...but that is all.

Councilor Farnham further states that, "I respected Mr. Klimm’s work as the Town Manager for many years, but I believe he has changed. He seems to be driven to controlling everything." Once again, Mr Farnham is seeing quixotic windmills instead of concrete reality. He seems to believe that Mr. Klimm was some sort of control freak, when in fact he (Mr. Klimm) has only been adeptly doing his job as the chief administrator of this Town. One aspect of the Town Manager's duties is to in fact direct, manage and to some extent control the operations of the Town so that things run as smoothly as possible in a coherent and predictable fashion. The image portrayed by Mr. Farnham’s own words seem to reasonably illustrate that he harbored some sort of confused animosity or resentment against Mr. Klimm which governed his actions on the Town Council rather than objectively representing the best interests of those who originally voted him into office.

Finally, though Farnham claims that he was not part of a "Gang of Six" conspiracy, his concluding statements do clearly demonstrate that he apparently has the paranoid delusion that the upcoming Nov. 8 election is part of some kind of clever and elaborate scheme by unknown parties to remove him and the other three incumbent Town Councilors facing re-election from office. The truth of the matter is that it is simply democracy in action with the voters of this Town exercising their Constitutional rights as citizens of this Commonwealth.

After giving Mr. Farnham's self-promoting claims and defensive statements the due consideration they merit, is he really the person best able to represent the residents of Precinct 11 for the next four years? If his actions in recent years on the Town Council are an accurate indicator of his performance, then it is probably not a bad idea to vote for change in the upcoming election. Change in this case will be a good thing.